UNION CITY — Whether it’s youth soccer or senior square dancing,’tis the season for nonprofits to snap, crackle and spark their way out of the poor house.

Saturday marked the start of “safe and sane” fireworks sales in Union City, three days after the fireworks went on sale in Newark.

While illegal M-80s and bottle rockets bear menacing names such as “Thunder Bomb,” many of the legal fireworks, with names like “Jade Flower” or “Rose Blossom” seem to belong at a cosmetic counter.

“These are the ones for me,” said Victor Armendariz of San Jose. “The other stuff will blow your hand off.”

Fremont has outlawed all fireworks, but Newark and Union City both allow an assortment of fireworks that don’t explode, soar skyward or scamper along the ground. With the firecrackers off-limits, Independence Day revelers have their pick of whistlers, sparklers and sparking fountains.

That stuff is as good as gold for nonprofits that have erected fireworks stands dotting both cities.

“We’d be in big trouble without this,” said John Sanchez of the Union City Youth Soccer League. Last year, the league’s stand near Union Landing netted $25,000 — a quarter of its operating budget and enough, Sanchez said, to pay enrollment fees for poorer kids.

“Fund raising is almost obsolete these days,” said Lita Fau of the Union City Youth Football League. The group has received support from a surprising source: The Police Athletic League, which is letting them set up shop on their Whipple Road lot.

Local nonprofits have become so dependent on fireworks sales that in 2002 they led a successful ballot initiative in Union City to save the explosives after the City Council banned them at the urging of

police and fire officials.

Relations between the groups and the city remain a little tense. Overworked fire department personnel were late arriving to several stands Saturday to certify them. The delay forced groups, including the American Legion baseball club, to refuse to sell to waiting customers.

The baseball club has seen fireworks revenues drop in recent years from about $25,000 to $12,000, said team president David Ybarra. He attributed the decline to the city’s decision to allow more stands and shorten the selling period to the first four days of July, giving Newark groups a head start.

The Farmers and Farmerette’s, a Newark-based square-dancing club, expect to make between $35,000 and $52,000 over their seven-day selling period, said chairman Don Baker.

Anyone who looks under 30 should expect to be carded at a fireworks stand, but workers don’t have to ask patrons where they live.

“We’ll be breaking the law,” said Robert Galowicz, as carted his Delirium fountain cone back to his family in Palo Alto, where, he said, fireworks are illegal.

Just because legal fireworks are relatively safe — though they caused a brush fire in Union City three years ago — doesn’t mean they’re boring, Sanchez said.

This year, the soccer league is debuting the Komido 3000 Fountain, which for $49 is billed to send sparks seven feet into the air for more than four minutes.

Intuitive Surgical paid $30.4 million in cash on March 5 for a more than three-decade-old building about two blocks from its current headquarters, which are on Kifer Road in Sunnyvale, according to Santa Clara County property records.

House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings, D-Md., said in a letter sent Thursday to White House Counsel Pat Cipollone that the administration has failed to produce documents tied to Kushner and other officials despite requests from the committee since 2017.